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The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Philosophy of Mind Series)
 
 
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The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Philosophy of Mind Series) (Paperback)

by David J. Chalmers (Author) "Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious ..." (more)
4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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"Eloquent, fiendishly clever ... One of the best science books of the year."

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Eloquent, fiendishly clever ... One of the best science books of the year. (Sunday Times )

an outstanding contribution to our understanding of consciousness (Steven Pinker )

a startling first book

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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An honest look at the "hard problem" of consciousness, 1 Dec 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Philosophy of the Mind) (Hardcover)
The basic problem with any materialist theory of consciousness is that there is no room for consciousness to *do* anything -- it is caused by certain material processes but does not itself cause anything. The firing of a neuron can always be explained in terms of the firing of other neurons, the impingement of a photon on a photoreceptor, or some other objectively observable cause. At no point is it necessary to say that "this neuron fired because the brain it was part of had such-and-such a subjective experience". Thus consciousness is not logically necessary in our objective description of the material world, so we can at least conceive of a world where David Chalmers' zombie twin writes papers and books about the mind-body problem without ever having any subjective experience itself. This seems absurd but the absurdity is inherent in all the various flavors of functionalism or property dualism. And "new physics" won't change the picture at all -- string theory, quantum gravity, quantum multiverses, and any as yet unconcieved of physical theory are all simply more of the same kind of "ontological stuff" that we already have -- objective procedures for predicting the behavior of objectively measurable things.

Some functionalists attempt to make the problem go away simply by declaring conscious states a matter of definition -- "pain" is some set of states of an information processing system, "pleasure" is some other, etc. Thus whether a robot that makes a convincing whine when you hit it actually experiences pain is a matter of definition. Few would deny that there is indeed a correlation between neural states and subjective experience, but anyone who has actually experienced pain knows that it is more than a matter of definition -- your pain won't go away just because everybody else on the planet has redefined your neural state as pleasure.

Finally, substance dualism, for good reasons not considered seriously by most philosophers, doesn't solve any of the problems but merely hides them behind a black screen.

Chalmers recognizes the absurdities inherent in all theories of consciousness. He refuses to sweep the problems under a rug; he argues for a form of property dualism while being honest enough to point out that it leads to the bizarre conclusion that we puzzle about the nature of consciousness for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that we actually *are* conscious. Like me you probably won't be willing to go as far as Chalmers wants to take you, but his book makes it plain that all the apparent avenues of escape lead to pitfalls at least as bad as the ones on the road he takes. If Chalmers is right, and consciousness must be added as an "extra feature" in our description of reality, it is devilishly hard to see how we will ever have a good theory of it. How will we be able to convincingly determine whether that poor robot really hurts?

The book is very clearly written; you don't need a formal education in philosophy to follow his arguments. Overall this is one of the best books on the mind-body problem I've read.

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An exploration of consciousness for expert readers, 30 Jun 2006
By Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract.com" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Philosopher and author David J. Chalmers makes an ambitious, daring attempt to expand the understanding of consciousness. Although he admits that his sympathies are with materialism, he concludes that materialist (physical) explanations cannot account for the existence of consciousness. His theory of consciousness is based in the natural world, but he proposes that consciousness has both physical and nonphysical properties. He suggests that a set of psychophysical laws are needed to explain the how and why of consciousness. Although parts of this book are densely technical and call for readers with a thorough background in mathematics, physics and philosophy, Chalmers has taken pains to make his material as accessible as possible to the average well-educated person. He even puts asterisks beside sections that lay readers are likely to find too daunting, and notes those sections general readers might most productively read, skim or ignore. We suggest this book to well-schooled readers who are interested in the philosophy of the mind, cognition or psychology.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Review of David Chalmers' 'The Conscious Mind', 20 Dec 2003
Along with Erwin Schrodinger's 'Mind and Matter', this ranks as one of the best writings about consciousness I have read. Chalmers does not evade the problem of subjective experience, but faces it directly and acknowledges that materialistic science cannot explain the subjective phenomenon of consciousness. It is rare to find a work that faces up to the problem so honestly, without having to resort to accounts of structure and dynamics that do not bear any meaning when explaining the nature of subjective experience. I would thoroughly recommend this book to those who are interested in consciousness, and are dissatisfied with contemporary writings on it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Old arguments dressed up as new
The book starts off very well; the first section on fundamentals is very well explained and is useful to anyone studying philosophy. Read more
Published on 26 Feb 2002 by Julian Lewis

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting take on the mind/body problem
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the philosophy of mind or even for anyone who has ever puzzled over the phenomenon of consciousness. Read more
Published on 15 Sep 1997

5.0 out of 5 stars If the book is correct you are more than a bunch of atoms!
David Chalmers has put forth a very interesting philosophical framework for a consistent analises of the brain-mind problem. Read more
Published on 26 Jul 1996

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